Upping Your Gratitude Game

I spent this past week with my long time partner Steve.  Both SuperGeeks for Nonviolent Communication we tend to talk about and philosophize about how to be, do and teach NVC a great deal of the time when we are together.  A cool thing happened this visit.

We usually put together a list of things we might do upon my arrival.  After our trip to see the eclipse [a truly ecstatic experience], we chose to participate in more projects than we originally anticipated while I was in North Carolina.  It made for tight scheduling, lots of thinking, and lots of opportunity to be in distress. 

We began to notice our capacity to ‘forget to enjoy life’ and even drop into complaint (albeit only in tone of voice at times), with some regularity and we decided to support ourselves in finding joy!  Steve’s request was to support his return to joy by inviting him to share what he is grateful for if and when I noticed his grumpy attitude.  He was far grumpier than I, and more often than I, in my opinion (hehe).

What Happened?

What ended up happening was pretty amazing and fun!

Working on some hard, complicated projects late into the night, we had a few [read more than you might imagine] opportunities to implement our plan.  What ended up happening, is the both of us spontaneously just broke into gratitudes if the other had complaint energy. This happened instead of me reminding him…or him reminding me.  It seemed more efficient somehow – not that either of us thought about it – to just begin announcing our gratitudes.  Because of our competitive nature the other would then start calling out their gratitudes too! 

It was so much fun!  All of a sudden I would hear Steve scream out, “I love my knees!, I appreciate the sun!,  I am so grateful for my life!”  In an instant I knew I must have had complaint energy and broke out into my own shouts of appreciation, “I love my hair!, My body supports me!, I love my fingernails!”  And then we would laugh and laugh.   Instant energy shift.

More than joy.

While this new way of being was just delightful, we noticed something more.  Pretty much all the week something new happened consistently.

Here are a few examples. 

This same project we were working on late into the night.  We were putting something together that we bought online.  We were pretty certain that critical parts were missing.  As we got bummed out and found our joy again, we decided to just keep going until we could not continue without the missing part.  Our friend walked in to check up on our progress.  He was one of the people we were hoping to contribute to by doing this.   We told him of our dilemma of the missing pieces.  Instantly he noticed that two pieces were connected and in fact, not missing!  Not only were we able to celebrate his saving the day, we were able to complete the job that night!

It turned out that I needed to buy new tires while in Asheville.  This was very much NOT part of our plan and since I was driving home 600 miles the next day, my safety became the priority need.  We were also hosting an event that evening – just hours away that we wanted to create materials for.  We decided to work while waiting.  The tire place was in strip mall. 

Not wanting to sit inside and breathe the fresh scent of rubber tires in the store, we were looking to a teeny strip of green to sit on and get to work.  We had a few opportunities to shout our gratitudes – needless to say.  The most astounding part was how easy this was to do.

We walked toward the far end of the lot.  What did we find?  A park!  At a river’s edge.  With tables and benches.  Lots of green space and quiet.  Right there.  [Steve has lived in Asheville for close to 20 years, and been to that strip mall many, many times, never knowing it was that this park was tucked away in the back corner of the parking lot, just for context of the miraculousness of this].

We Upped Our Gratitude Game

Steve and I were crystal clear that staying in the gratitude consciousness ~ upping our gratitude game ~ allowed some kind of opening for us to create and/or to see what we were hoping for.  Consistently.  It was remarkable.

Say This Not That

I would like you to take my word for it, and just do this too.  And, it really doesn’t matter.  Don’t take my word for it and just do this.

Find a buddy, or do it on your own.  Commit to changing your point of view the instant you notice you want to complain.  Try it for a day.  Or better yet a week.  I will be curious to read your comments to hear what happens for you!

Relationship Agreements ~ Who Needs Them?

Are you in a relationship?  With anyone?  In reality we are in relationship with everyone we meet or even walk by.  It is with some unspoken agreement that if you walk by someone that you do or don’t say hello (or make eye contact).

Let’s at this point just consider the important ones.  Significant other, workmates, friends, business partners, family.  Are you crystal clear about the roles you are each agreeing to?  How do you know?

How much time have you spent making explicit agreements as your relationship(s) evolved?  In my business I find that it is only when you disagree that you realize the answer to that question.  And usually it is ‘not enough’.

When we get together with people it is usually because we have some affinity.  We like what they say, what they are doing, how they look, etc.  We talk and we are mostly relating to our imagination of who that person is because we can’t possibly know.  And because we are limited to using words (mostly) to communicate, we don’t know until we do that when you said a particular word, they imagined something completely different than you did.  And most often, there is no way to know it.  We thought we were in complete agreement!

TRY THIS EXERCISE:

Take a minute to get comfortable.  Now I am going to give you a word and I want you to fully imagine it in your head.  Get a clear picture. 

MOTHER

Okay…what (who) did you imagine?  Maybe your own mom, maybe mother earth, maybe your children?  Possibly there are more than one image, activities that you did with your mom, the special time you baked a birthday cake together, and/or particular feelings.  Maybe your image conjured up feelings of nurturing, or possibly the opposite, maybe disappointment.

Can you now imagine anyone else having the exact same image(s) in their minds as you?

Probably not.

Let’s use the example of TREE…imagine a tree. 

Likely no one else has the exact same image as you.  Yet, when you talk you agree that you love trees, maybe you move in together and completely agree that you are going to plant trees.  It may not be until you get to the nursery that you realize you had been imagining completely different things all along.  You wanted a huge maple tree and your partner imagined a row of fruit trees.

This is when communication, self-awareness, care, compassion, curiosity (all the skills that Nonviolent Communication teaches) are critical.

Even when you do ‘have an agreement’, you may realize you can’t really count on an agreement with someone else.  It may be simply because language and filters get in the way of actual understanding as in the examples above, simply different images/experiences are imagined when we speak.  And, as often happens, it may be that the other person simply does something other than what they agreed to do.  Possibly even just minutes or days after they made the agreement.

It really doesn’t matter what the agreements are or why the outside agreement is no longer in effect.  What matters ultimately are your agreements with yourself.  What needs/values you are committed to.  Knowing this leads to confidence and trust.  Confidence that you will trust yourself no matter what.  Trust yourself to get your own needs met.  Confidence that what ever the circumstance, you have other resources and/or strategies to get your needs met.

I am not suggesting that we don’t make agreements with others.  I am full on in support of making agreements and often.  However, I am encouraging you to stay out of the trap of depending on someone else to do what they agree to in order to be happy.  The more you can keep your own agreements to your values, the more resourceful and creative you will be in connecting to life, meaning what is actually happening, and ask for what you want.  Which may or may not include the person who just broke the agreement.

Pain Wheel

If you didn’t have pain, what would you be doing differently?

I have a client who has been in physical pain for many months, off and on approaching years, in fact.  She has attributed it to a car accident.  Science tells me in her case, 2 things.  One is that the ‘damage’ to her spine is not likely the cause of her pain, and the other is that it is unlikely that the accident she had could actually cause the ‘damage’ she does show up on x-ray and MRI.

Week in and week out, when she comes in, she tells me in exquisite detail, over and over, the woes of her physical life and her social life.  Every week, I ask her to focus her attention on the progress she is making, the decreased amount of pain, the increased distance she can walk without pain, etc., which she also reports.  It seems that celebrating and savoring these changes is quite difficult for her.  Her focus is her pain, no matter what else she is experiencing.  She just keeps asking when she would be out of pain.

Recently, I asked her what would she be doing differently if she was out of pain.  What is missing now, what can’t she do now because of the pain she is in.  My intention was to bring to the foreground of her attention her intention.  What did she want from life?

Her answer surprised me.  She said that if she felt better she was afraid that people would want her to do more.  That she wouldn’t get the help she needed.   As much as I prompted, She did not actually say what she did want.   In the end, the needs ~ what is important to her ~ seem relatively clear.  Support, dependability, nurturing and ease come to my mind. 

Her strategy to get these needs met seems so tragic to me.  She is in pain, and unhappy.  And, she doesn’t ‘have to’ do the thing she imagines people would ask her to do if she were well. 

Is this familiar to you?   How aware are you of what you are wanting in your life?  How stuck are you in the one or two strategies that you have discovered over time get those needs met (no matter how tragically)?  Are you on the PAIN WHEEL?

In the case of this client, I would love her to free herself from her belief that if people expect and even ask her to do things, that she has no choice but to say yes.  It isn’t true and the prison of pain she is living into is devastating to her happiness and joy of life.  For my client, learning the skill of being able to say yes and no to requests gracefully and compassionately would be quite empowering and dare I say, make her life more wonderful.

If you are in chronic pain ~ emotional or physical ~ sure, being out of pain would be quite delightful.  Just make sure you ask yourself why?  Ask the deeper questions.   Questions you want the answers to.  Questions that can actually be answered and will make a difference in your life. 

Here are some examples:

What experience do I want to have in my life? 

How can I have more of this regardless of my pain? 

What is my pain keeping me from experiencing? 

Life and Death

I have recently experienced the death of someone close to me.  The suddenness of this loss reminds me how fragile life is.

My concerns, thoughts, and worries had certainly not been on this ‘healthy’ person. I had been preparing for others close to me to  make this transition, contemplating how their passing would affect my life.  Not Tom.  Tom was slow, steady, strong.  He was here for the long haul.  

Now, immersed in Tom’s personal papers, his things, awash in stories and memories of what he meant to people, I am reminded of the significance of every moment we live.

I don’t, however, want to write about his life.  I am writing about life.  What do we do with it?  We have it for some unspecified amount of time.  We share it with some people in a deep way, with others in a more superficial way, and somehow - albeit unknown - we share it with those billions of people who are here for the same moment we are but whom we will never meet.

Intention has been the theme of my life and my practice in recent years - knowing why, in every moment, I do and say the things I do.  But what’s the grand intention?  Is there a purpose to life?  To my life?  To your life?  I believe it is up to each of us.  We get to decide.

Cosmological physicist Brian Swimme says:

“At the very, very beginning, the universe comes into existence and these various forms of matter experience an attraction for each other. So that very attraction is what gave rise to our existence in our consciousness. In a way, the purpose of human beings is to reflect love, is to be self-aware of love, is to be conscious about love, is to be that conscious expression of love, as far as we know, in the universe.”

If you knew you had a short time to live, would you spend that time being angry at someone for cutting you off on the highway?  Or holding a grudge with your friend for forgetting to send a birthday card?  Would you spend it judging people for how they eat?  Or holding off saying something important?  Or would you choose to spend your time left cherishing every minute?  And if you chose to cherish every moment, what would you be doing? How would you being doing it, and with whom?

I encourage you to give these questions some thought, some energy, some action.  Why put it off?  For every moment you are alive, know your intentions and act on them.  For yourself, and for those you will leave behind.  

This poem by Dawna Markova, offers me inspiration and describes the grand intention for my life, which I consciously choose in every moment that I can remember.   What’s yours?

I will not live an unlived life.

I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire.

I choose to inhabit my days,

to allow my living to open me,

to make me less afraid, more accessible,

to loosen my heart

until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise.

I choose to risk my significance;

to live,

so that which came to me as seed

goes to the next as blossom,

and that which came to me as blossom,

goes on as fruit.